Zip, the master fixer of surfboards
Nolan “Zip” van Wyk is a genius with resin and fibreglass.
If your surfboard is your pride and joy and you spent a long time saving to buy it, you will likely be distraught if you ding it.
For any bang, gash or hole in your board, Zip is your man. He is a consummate craftsman, productive and artful and for him, the process is everything.
I joke with Zip: “What is it like to be OCD?”
He laughs: “It is bloody terrible! Sometimes I wake up at night thinking about how I am going to fix a ding.”
Zip’s home is immaculate. He is a neat freak of note.
His fishing rods are delicately racked against the wall in descending order of length.
His eye is meticulous and if there is a finer artisan to fix your darling ride on this planet, I have not met that person yet. We had a chat and a chuckle about old times.
Zip learned to surf around 1970 at about age 11 or 12 with buddies at the time Skip Bradfield, Dave Bradfield and Gary Wegner.
He learned on a David Nuuhiwa style twin fin, ex-Bevin Theron, shaped like a less-than-pretty ironing board with two parallel fins right at the back of the square chopped-off tail.
The magic of the Mark Richards twin revolution update had not yet appeared. Surfboard building was gaining momentum in East London at the time.
Chaps like Rob Stone, Doughie and Rod Kunhardt were getting into shaping and glassing.
Gordon Harmer and Roy Raffan were discovering that you can’t glass polystyrene with polyester resin.
Soggy cloth on top of melted marshmallow is the end result. Glenn Cunningham and Steve Culbert were making Freedom surfboards and the game was getting going.
A Larmont surfboard at that stage cost R69 delivered.
As a Selborne school kid, Zip drifted into sanding surfboards and cutting out and foiling fins. His entry into resin and fibreglass has been since teenage days.
He never got into shaping but with resin, glass and squeegee, he is a master.
He has experienced sandpaper from hand to power tools and let me tell you, with a piece of 360 grit you can make or break a board.
Release lines and rear fin foils are critical to performance and Zip knows them all. A fin that hums or dull edges in the tail are the end of a good ride.
Seventies music of the day was fronted with the loud stuff of Jimmy Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who (Live at Leeds) and Deep Purple.
The mellow listening of the day was Bob Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel.
Zip is pacing up and down the house as he tells me the stories. His eyes twinkle and a permanent smile creases his face.
The love of surfing never dies in the heart, be you in the water or not.
Zip has been out of the water for some years now due to a hip injury birthed in teenage years from karate training. Damn you Bruce Lee. Then exostosis, ears growing closed and finally a bad back in the L5S1 area.
It is quaint how some of us fall apart and others like Pete Fowles get ridden over by a truck, break half the bones in their body and in three months they are surfing Indo again.
Similarly, senior surfer Gordon Harmer has not lived his life in cotton wool and yet he jogs down the road like a happy camper and paddles out at the back of Nahoon Reef while the likes of Zip and myself quaff Cataflam after a walk to the shop.
After Rhodes University BCom years, Zip became an expert on Wild Coast waves.
He has surfed near every nook and cranny.
Some spots are still as uninhabited and sharky today as they were then.
On one occasion while surfing the notorious Ntlonyana with David Bradfield a shark popped up.
“Whoa!” Zip exclaimed and pointed. “Nah, that is a mellow one,” David said. “He does not look aggressive at all.”
David carried on surfing. Zip was halfway up the hill heading for the trees.
Local surfing heroes of the day when Zip was growing up were the likes of Dave Hansen, Lindsay Wegner and Phil Fox. Overseas, Hackman, Lopez and Crawford were the guys.
Zip has travelled extensively overseas in his surfing pursuits and today his fishing rods enjoy more favour for fun, as they are less taxing on the body. He sure knows how to bring home a kob when the frying pan calls.
“The pursuit of perfection will end up being perfect,” Zip tells me, the poor tortured soul.
It is an unforgiving taskmaster going beyond excellence but if he is fixing my board, I am OK with it.